


Shuck All the Light From My Skin

by KaelsMiscellany



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M, Multi, Post Series, Sex Magic, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 01:24:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12097650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaelsMiscellany/pseuds/KaelsMiscellany
Summary: It begins on autumn’s first night.





	Shuck All the Light From My Skin

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't exactly intend to write this. But then I consumed all of sulienapgwien's [Unholy Trinity tag](http://sulienapgwien.tumblr.com/tagged/the-unholy-trinity) and my mind instantly connected it to this week's writing feedback challenge. So I hope you enjoy dreamy-dark OT3.
> 
> Title comes from “Shuck” by Purity Ring

It begins on autumn’s first night.

It has been a year since the end of the war, since Al- _The Darkling’s_ death.

Six months since she returned to Os Alta to become Nikolai’s bride to be.

Three months since their wedding on Belyanoch, in a church dedicated to her no less. Nikolai, even now, found it endlessly amusing. _“Are you sure you’ve blessed this marriage enough Alina?”_ If it weren’t unbefitting of a queen she would punch his shoulder.

Nights grow longer and longer as the leaves turn a riot of colors. Rebuilding has been hard work, if satisfying. After dinner they retire to their room, and fall into bed. Uncaring of scars or fetters and collars.

-

Alina wakes with a start, cold seeping into her bones. Had Nikolai left a window open?

When she looks around she realizes that she is _not_ in the palace. She’s in the woods near where Baghra’s hut once was.

She’s not afraid of the dark, even lacking her powers as she has been, she has not feared the dark in a long time. No, what she fears is that she is not alone in the darkness.

Fetter and collar feel impossibly heavy as she retreats back inside.

-

Nikolai rolls over and tastes dirt. Even half asleep he makes a face. Alina is not one for tricks, although if this is one it seems a strange but entertaining one.

His eyes blink and blink, but there’s nothing more than darkness and night sounds all around him. A groan, now he knows it’s not his dear wife’s doing. The people might see her as a saint but the day she could carry him without him knowing he’d believe it.

Standing up he runs a hand through his hair and meanders back to his rooms. Shadows drip from his scarred fingers like water.

-

When they come together there is darkness between them. Heavy shadows and tastes of something far darker.

Neither seems to care as they collide, there is nothing here but them coming together in ways older than time.

Alina knows she is no Grisha, not anymore. Yet it feels as if she is filled with power once more, spinning ever inwards as she rolls her hips. Beneath her Nikolai groans, scarred fingers digging into her thighs. Candlelight flickers and gutters, dancing in time to their rhythm.

She cries out as power and orgasm converge. Imploding inside her and laying waste to them both.

Shadows converge as she falls onto Nikolai, brush her white hair from her neck as they roll onto their sides. Guide his arm as he wraps it around her waist. “Any bets?” He ribs.

With an exaggerated sigh she smacks his shoulder. “Not the betting kind.” No matter how the court and advisors might press heirs will come in their own sweet time. It’s not as if either of them are doddering and on the verge of death. For all that an assassin’s bullet would do them in as easily.

 _I am_ , a voice murmurs as they fall into sleep.

-

Nights grow longer and longer. The shadows get deeper and Alina nearly shatters her mirror when she sees gray eyes meet hers through it.

Turning around she sees nothing there, and there’s nothing in her mirror when she turns back. “Nikolai!” She may be a queen now, but she can still bellow like the peasant she was born as. With care she sets her brush down and gathers her robe about her, her husband’s thundering footsteps echoing down the hall.

He bursts into the room, for a moment the _Sturmhond_ he used to be.

“He was here.”

-

Where once he wore darkness he now seems to _be_ the darkness. Ever lingering.

He apparently enjoys it. —Why must they _both_ have such dramatic leanings? How is _she_ the sensible one?—

None of them say what it is, not aloud at least. _Merzost_ is still forbidden, she doubts being king and queen will save them from whatever retaliation there might be. This suits them all, it is not as if he ever enjoyed the glitterings of court life, boredom fluttering over his face every time she and Nikolai have to attend to some duty or another.

He does linger, as he always did before. Just harder to see.

-

Nikolai is ever the pragmatist. For all that he and Alina can, for all appearances, bring the dead back to life; he only finds himself thinking of how _useful_ it all is.

There is hundreds of years of experience he can now lean on, so long as he can roll his eyes at the more Grisha centric leanings. That experience is an asset he’s not going to throw away lightly, not with a whole kingdom to rebuild even still.

It’s the more devil-may-care part of him that knows he enjoys the nights far more than is...pragmatic.

“Shut up.” Alina’s voice breaks through their ‘argument’ over the recent debacle up in Fjerda—it almost makes him wish he were a no-good pirate again, if only to experience that chaos first hand. “You two keep talking and I’m not going to get any damn sleep.”

With a chuckle Nikolai rolls over to her, kissing her shoulder. “Will you ever find it in your heart to forgive me dearest saint?”

Their shadow rolls his eyes.

-

Aleksander wonders if he would have done things the same, knowing this was the outcome?

This unexpected second life.

It is not the power he ever wanted to have, nor the control. In fact it could be said he lacks both these things, dependent on two of the people he used like pawns in his previous game. Them and their _merzost_ like nothing he’s ever seen before.

As he blows out a candle and settles into a too warm bed and a tangle of limbs he thinks perhaps he would not have changed a thing.


End file.
